Calgary Flames Robyn Regehr is checked into the boards by San Jose Sharks Joe Thornton and Jeremy Roenick (R) in the first period during Game 2 of their NHL Western Conference quarter-final hockey game in Calgary, Alberta, April 15, 2008. REUTERS/Patrick Price (CANADA)

From the moment that the Sharks' annual pursuit of the Stanley Cup became less of an athletic achievement and more of a character issue, every win has been a triumph of will and every loss has morphed into proof of systemic inadequacy.

In many ways, this is just drama for drama's sake, a monument to the impatience of those who want steak with their sizzle. San Jose has persistently made the playoffs and even advanced in the playoffs, but never finished the playoffs before the playoffs were finished with them. Therefore, something must surely be wrong with them.

Nobody fills this bill quite as well as Joe Thornton. He is always acknowledged as one of the game's best players, but just as often questioned for not having powered his team to the big one, for not having put the entire tonnage of the organization on his shoulders and willed, towed or pistol-whipped it defiantly to glory.

I mean, I guess it makes sense if you squint hard enough and try to morph him into Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett - that is, if you don't get migraines first. But with a new series for the Sharks beginning tonight against the Dallas Stars, the discussion will come up again. I mean, it did in the Calgary series with Jarome Iginla as the straw horse, as the model of what a carry-the-team leader is supposed to be, and that was just a week ago.

Thornton, though, isn't the final building block of this Sharks team, but in fact one of the first. He was fingered, mostly wrongly, for not curing the Boston Bruins of what has ailed them since Bobby Orr retired, and he has been either Target No. 2 or No. 3 in the Sharks' last two second-round failings - Target No. 1 being Patrick Marleau, and the other being head coach Ron Wilson.

But targets are easy, especially in an often counterintuitive game like hockey. The fact is that Thornton isn't a symptom, but part of the cure. Far from failing to lead, he is the leader in a room of players who are still in the process of coalescing. Far from being a hindrance because he won't take the team on his shoulders, he gets that nobody has shoulders that good.

The Thorntonian Flaw isn't about insufficient selfishness, or insufficient vocalization, or insufficient gifts. In fact, if this can be called a flaw, he is guilty mostly of trying to make every play the perfect play, the no-brainer goal, of waiting, sometimes too long, for his mates to get into the ideal position to score, when sometimes it would serve him better to provide the pass a hair earlier and in doing so, say to the target of that pass, "OK, this is as good as it's gonna get right now, so you go make the play."

This isn't much of a problem, really, almost no problem at all. But it is the one thing that maybe Thornton hasn't quite mastered yet, and we mention it here because it is at such odds with the sustaining notion that Thornton doesn't come up sufficiently large when it matters most.

We mention it, too, because with the different challenges posed by Dallas, he will be re-evaluated as his teammates will, on a day-to-day basis, because for this team, winning guarantees another round of playoffs and another round of psychoanalysis, while losing just brings the couch.

This is what happens when a team, like a player, hasn't won a title after a given number of years. For Thornton, this is Year 10, and even though at age 28 he just a year ago entered an athlete's prime, 10 years is considered sufficiently long enough for snap judgments.

There are those who think Thornton is still paying for the way he was ejected from Boston, when he was all but called emotionally deficient by former general manager Harry Sinden, but that's too simple an answer. Some also postulate that because of the curvature of the Earth, Thornton isn't seen enough by the opinion-makers to dispel the old canards. This, too, misses the fact that in the Internet age, time of day is less important than it once was.

No, more than anything else, this is about the fact that San Jose hasn't finished the deal yet despite becoming the critics' darling for three years' running, and when blame is delegated, it is delegated from the top down.

And now comes Dallas - like San Jose, a disciplined, puck-control team with a goaltender who has made a dramatic leap in the last year, and unlike Calgary because fewer players can be exploited for their shortcomings. The Stars not only survived without lockdown defenseman/power play supervisor Sergei Zubov, but developed young Ds like Trevor Daley and Matt Niskanen in the void. In addition, they got signature seasons from wingers Brenden Morrow and Antti Miettinen, and center Mike Ribeiro. If Calgary was a tough out, Dallas is thrice that.

Which means that, yet again, San Jose's heart, spine and soul will be called into question, and because Joe Thornton is so much of each, he will be questioned as well. It is the curse of the ringless star, coupled with the curse of the players whose greatness is best explained by the contributions of those around him. It is no way for the faint to go about chasing success, but it is Thornton's path - to become what his critics have waited for him to be, by not taking the advice of those very critics.